Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Man in the Class (MiC) and I seemed to have found a groove this week; and even when we were “Mr’ing” and “Ms’ing” each other over the kids’ heads because we didn’t quite agree on what the other had said during class (okay, it was mostly me “Mr’ing him, but I am the teacher with experience), we were absolutely respectful of each other and the decorum we wanted to maintain in the classroom.

On Back to School Night I almost gagged when he told the parents that we both check our emails obsessively and that they shouldn’t be surprised to see a response at 2am—at this I lost my listener status and yelled out “not me.” I am surely trying not to do too much work from home this year; I need to maintain a separation of work and home. While the number of essays I grade makes me break this rule on occasion (Sunday mornings are usually my paper grading time), I really do try to maintain the separation. Perhaps because I really do see myself as a writer, I have never been 100% committed to any job: I was never my work.

But back to the classroom. There have been far too many deer in the headlights looks from 14-year-olds when they realize that there are implications for blowing off their homework. Yes, if you don’t do your homework 0’s will be inserted in the gradebook and the grade will reflect that, and not the fact that you had intended to do the homework, or that you left it at home, or that your printer broke, or that you, yes, forgot about it but would have done it. Do you not get it? I, of course, break with department policy and grant them a week to get things in; I mean who wants to see kids grounded for a lifetime after just the first month of high school? Surely not me.

I have four Asian girls with very similar first names; it took me a month to distinguish between the names and the girls. Every year there seems to be a name that repeats itself in a few classes, as is the case this year. And, for some reason those kids with the same name always look similar, making my life complicated in the “needing to distinguish each child for his uniqueness” way. 

On a truly positive note where I will ignore students from last year who did not say hello to me when they stopped by my room to pick up papers from last year, a couple of students did yell out to my class “she’s the best freshman teacher!” Yes!

I think that I will end this update on that note. Have a great week.

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